Second Breakfast was responsible for a lot of overtime yesterday. In tournaments like Grands Prix, the players get 5 additional turns to finish their match after time is called on a round. Typically, those 5 turns are over quickly. But if one of those turns is a huge Second Breakfast combo turn, it can take a while. It has happened on multiple occasions this weekend that 1000+ players were waiting for a single Second Breakfast player to break all of his Eggs and loop Pyrite Spellbomb before the next round could start.

"A large part of the delays have been caused by Eggs," Head Judge Gijsbert Hoogendijk mentioned. "And some of the worst delays were caused by Eggs mirror matches, with one player trying to go off in response to the other."

Gijsbert was referring to how an Egg player could piggyback off the Second Sunrise of his opponent. While Faith's Reward only refers to "your graveyard", Second Sunrise affects both players equally. So if you have a bunch of Eggs in play and your opponent recklessly casts Second Sunrise, you can sacrifice all of your artifacts and hope to draw more Faith's Reward than your opponent.

This gives me headaches even thinking about it. You know, it would all become much easier if a Silence gets resolved at some point in the game. But then your opponent might try to go off in response to that Silence ... Maybe you should try to time the Silence in response to an opposing Faith's Reward when the opponent doesn't have mana available? Argh, this is getting horribly complicated.

I just want to give one piece of advice to any player considering Eggs for a Modern tournament at some point in the future: Test the mirror match. The rest of the tournament will thank you for not having to figure out the interactions on the fly in the extra turns. And a player who knows what's going on in this particular mirror matchup will have a huge egg -- I mean edge.

Kevin Chiche and Peter Dun both used Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker to create arbitrary numbers of hasty copies of Pestermite, Deceiver Exarch, or Restoration Angel, but their decks almost couldn't be more different. Chiche ran the combo as the killer in his red-green-white(-blue) Birthing Pod deck, whereas Dun had it more traditional in blue and red (and a tiny splash of black) with Splinter Twin. Meanwhile, Arnaud Duval and Mario Zuñiga both used aggressive beatdown strategies with an almost combo-like component for their respective 9-0s, Robots for Duval, Infect for Zuñiga. That's four different archetypes and no Jund ...

Englishman Daniel Royde already has one Grand Prix win under his belt and, sitting here at 8-1, was clearly looking for more Grand Prix glory. In his way, however, stood Frenchman Timothée Simonot, who wasn't willing to give up his own shot at glory easily.

Another Bolt and Abrupt Decay cleared the board anyway, except for the two Blinkmoth Nexus that nibbled away at Royde's life total. When those died later, Vault Skirge and Signal Pest took over. Meanwhile, Royde couldn't for the life of him draw a creature of his own (and his life really did depend on it). He tried to make do with two Treetop Villages, but the constant drain on his mana meant he couldn't both race and remove Simonot's creatures. He had to take care of some additional ones, quickly abandoned his racing ambitions, and in the end couldn't deal with all of them.

A second Inquisition missed, while Simonot played a second Inkmoth Nexus, and now Royde had a creature himself, a sizeable 4/5 Tarmogoyf, that grew to 5/6 when Abrupt Decay killed Vault Skirge. The race was on: Tarmogoyf brought Simonot to 15, the two Inkmoth Nexus gave Royde two poison counters; Simonot 10, Royde at four poison. At this rate, Simonot was clearly going to lose this game. Something had to be done.

Simonot had one topdeck and it needed to be a good one. It was. Another Cranial Plating. And this time Simonot managed his mana flawlessly, activated and equipped his one remaining Inkmoth Nexus, and delivered the final points of poison.

With 10-2 records, both Marijn Lybaert from Belgium and Mathieu Deloly from France still have their sights set on the Top 8, but in order to make the cut they're (likely) going to need to go undefeated from this point forward. Marijn is an accomplished player with several Pro Tour Top 8s to his name. Mathieu Deloly is less experienced -- in fact, he had just started playing again after a three-year hiatus. (See, no one ever quits!) Both players came to battle with an Infect deck.

Game 1

Marijn won the die roll, drew his opening hand, and tanked for a minute before finally saying "keep".

Now, this is a perfectly fine hand, except possibly when playing against Jund. Marijn wasn't only thinking about whether or not he would keep the hand, but rather which card he would play on turn 1: Glistener Elf or Noble Hierarch. He could, of course, have said "keep" right away and then think for a minute on which card he would want to lead off with, but that would've given away a lot of information on his hand. Specifically, it would've given away that he had a choice between multiple one drops. By deciding on his turn 1 play before saying "keep", he left his opponent in the dark about what he was actually thinking about.

Marijn, on his third turn, played his second Rancor and attacked with his 6/2 Trampling Glistener Elf (+4/+0 from double Rancor, +1/+1 due to Noble Hierarch). Mathieu blocked it with his own Glistener Elf. At first glance, it might seem awkward to block a 6/2 trampler with a 1/1 creature. But Glistener Elf deals damage to creatures in the form of -1/-1 counters, so Marijn's Glistener Elf would immediately die once the Exalted bonus would wear off. But before his Infect creature died, Marijn cast Groundswell and Mutagenic Growth to put his opponent at 9 poison counters. Trample on the Rancor was being really pivotal here.

After that exchange, a second Glistener Elf came down for Marijn. A Rancor and some pump spells later, the players were shuffling up for the next game.

As I went through the Day 2 decklists earlier today, there were several decks that looked particularly interesting to me. They might not be perfectly tuned yet and none of their pilots appear to be in contention for the Top 8, but they are certainly something different, and they seem like a lot of fun to play. Let's get to the lists!

This deck aims to assemble the combo of Melira, Sylvok Outcast, Viscera Seer, and Kitchen Finks for infinite life, and then infinite damage with Muderous Redcap on the subsequent time. Several new Return to Ravnica additions may have made the deck stronger than before; Deathrite Shaman in particular makes an appearance as a useful mana accelerant.

So that's my selection of five decks to follow. If you've been looking for a fun and powerful deck to play on Magic Online or the upcoming Modern PTQs, give one of these deck a spin!

Sunday, 1:45 a.m. – Quick Question

by Tobi Henke

What Modern Deck Should People Absolutely NOT Play at the Moment?

Shahar Shenhar: Eggs. I hate it. For one thing, I wouldn't be able to play it. And it takes so long. Can't play it on Magic Online, and even here every round's in overtime because of it.

Kenny Öberg: Scapeshift.

Frank Karsten: Soul Sisters.

Vincent Lemoine: Tron.

Sunday, 2:27 a.m. – And a Vengeful Vine It Is

by Tobi Henke

Earlier today, I saw Shahar Shenhar facing Pack Rat. Wait, what? This isn't Return to Ravnica Limited, after all, but Modern, two formats that, regarding power level, are separated by several magnitudes. Turns out, Pack Rat is a fine sideboard card for grind-y match-ups, at least when the deck it's in needs ways to discard Vengevine (and is happy to discard Bloodghast or Gravecrawler). The deck we're talking about here was played to a 7-2 finish yesterday by Alan Meaney. Take a look!

While watching some of the games at the Grand Prix and while going through the decklists earlier today, my eye caught several interesting sideboard cards that might be excellent choices for the current metagame or just downright baffling. Let me highlight a couple of them.

Game 2

Things went at a much more sedate pace this time around. Simonot spent his first turn taking a peek at (and a Serum Visions from) Öberg's one-land hand via Thoughtseize. Öberg risked a glance as well with Gitaxian Probe.

Two turns later, Simonot had rebuild his board and had Öberg down to 6, when Öberg finally found a second land. He cast Desperate Ritual, Seething Song, and Shatterstorm, leaving Simonot with one Island on the battlefield and one card in hand.